Back to the Amiga 500 Batman Pack 30 years later

[Dastardly]

Great story. A lot of it mirrors my own journey to an Amiga back in 1990. It was too expensive to ask for as a Christmas present, so I saved and saved, but realistcally I wasn't getting very far. Long story short, a twist of fate saw me come in to some money. £400 exactly and no prizes for guessing where that went!

June I think it was, 1990 and the Amiga 500 Batpack was mine. The greatest of all the packs. Batman the Movie, Interceptor and Newzealand Story were/are amazing. Also in there was Deluxe Paint II, which I poured hours and hours in to. I'm now a graphic designer and put it all down to Deluxe Paint.

I still own that same Amiga 500 and it still works. I'd never sell it as it holds too many memories for me. I still have the main box, but the outer sleeve is long gone. Shame.

Congrats on getting an Amiga again.

[005AGIMA]

Originally Posted by Dastardly

Great story. A lot of it mirrors my own journey to an Amiga back in 1990. It was too expensive to ask for as a Christmas present, so I saved and saved, but realistcally I wasn't getting very far. Long story short, a twist of fate saw me come in to some money. £400 exactly and no prizes for guessing where that went!

June I think it was, 1990 and the Amiga 500 Batpack was mine. The greatest of all the packs. Batman the Movie, Interceptor and Newzealand Story were/are amazing. Also in there was Deluxe Paint II, which I poured hours and hours in to. I'm now a graphic designer and put it all down to Deluxe Paint.

I still own that same Amiga 500 and it still works. I'd never sell it as it holds too many memories for me. I still have the main box, but the outer sleeve is long gone. Shame.

Congrats on getting an Amiga again.

I hear you.

I have to remind myself that I only sold the Amiga as it was the only upgrade path I had financially at the time.

It's going to cost a fair bit to re-build my original collection, which is my intention.

Now there is a missing part of my story.........

Early 2000's when Amiga's were worthless, by boss at work GAVE me his old Amiga 500+, in box (not with inserts and books), with a couple of games, and it had a 2MB Ram upgrade as well.

He was just going to throw it out.

I played with it about twice.

Then that's when we chose to move to Australia, and after selling off everything we could, and giving away other stuff, anything left we took to the dump.

.....including the Amiga.

Moving country is a bloody big deal and you kind of have to unload unnecessary baggage.

I remember being conflicted as I held it's box but I was kind of in a automatic emotional detachment mode if that makes sense.

A self imposed "it's just meaningless stuff" mode.

And again I state, this was when they were worthless.

And this particular box held no personal attachment for me, as it wasn't mine originally.

I remember my dad looking questioningly at me as i held it at the dump.

Part of me hopes that I remember that day wrong. That I changed my mind and that it's in my parents loft somewhere under other crap.

I dont think it is.

That's one of the reasons I had to BUY another one. To INVEST in one. And that's why it had to be the Batman Pack.

I'm righting a wrong.

[Dastardly]

Yeah, I guess if you're moving to another part of the world then sentimentality goes out of the window. Luckily, I was never made to make such a difficult decision!

[MikeRichmond]

Great write up. I missed out on the Batman pack, I ended up with the Cartoon Classics A500 Plus instead, with the terrible Captain Planet game!

[005AGIMA]

Originally Posted by MikeRichmond

Great write up. I missed out on the Batman pack, I ended up with the Cartoon Classics A500 Plus instead, with the terrible Captain Planet game!

All great packs though.

My Nephew ended up with an A500+ Screen gems pack.

He lived with us for a while (Story I wont bore you with) so we had 2 Amiga's in the house.

Actually....it was a sad amiga story that one. The year my sister brought it, they picked it up from the shops, and left it on the back seat of the car under a jacket in a multistory car park, as they had to go to a performance of something in town.

You can guess what happend.

Window smashed. Amiga gone.

So they had to buy another one, as it was his Christmas present.

Thieves are scum.

[gimbal]

Ultimately the thief probably broke in to see if there was something valuable in one of the coat pockets and to their surprise found a wonderful computer system underneath

[AF2013]

I Love reading Amiga people story when you buy first Amiga computer

Mine was back in 1991 in Mircofun Shop(I love that shop so much as I wish I took photo of it on outside of the shop!), I went in to buy Amiga 500 Batman pack but they say it is sold out which is bummer. I was looking so disappointing but the shop man say what about Amiga 500 Plus Cartoon classic(it was £399) and I thought yes I want it.

Once I bought it and ask my parent to take me home then I grab Amiga 500 boxed and rush upstairs in my bedroom and set it all up. I had choose which game I want to played and first game was Lemmings. I love lemming puzzle as it had everythings you want in game. I have also try two other which are Bart simpson and captain planet(love the copper effect background!)

I have go on Workbench and messing about then I started using Speech commands like typing "MOMMMMMMMM" and my mom heard it lol which I thought was cool at the time

The next day, I went to mircofun again and I checked out all the games I want as there were Shadow of the beast(hard game!), SpaceAce.

P.S. gimbal and 005AGIMA - Sorry to hear about that

[chip]

I buyed my Amiga 500 of second hand

I always will remember my first inserted disk : Zool

Impressive graphics and sound

I well remember also the wonderful Commodore 1084 (S?) monitor

But especially i remember an incredibly amount of disks (probably something like BS1 collection in size) i saw

My friend given to me to see them, but they are returned to the original owner

Recently he selled ALL the Amiga stuff and i was unhappy he doesn't tell me nothing

ALL that floppies nowadays are around somewhere

[005AGIMA]

I've decided to do a count down video blog that will take me from now until the day I go to the UK and unbox my Amiga.

I will add additional Episodes as and when they occur, but basically I'll cover the emotion behind re-playing each of the games that I got in my Batman Pack + Tenstar Games pack, plus anything else relevant to my re-introduction to Amiga, and my trip back to the UK to un-box the pack 30 years after buying my original.

It's a very personal journey so may have limited appeal but I still wanted to VLOG it. Not chasing subs or hits or anything like that.

Feel free to follow along.

Episode 1: Amiga Format issue 003 (really an introduction to the story and what the blog will cover).
[ Show youtube player ]

Playlist (all future eps will be put in here in order):
[ Show youtube player ]

Channel (Still working on channel design as left over from NMS days lol):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk7...y7i5sz8poK2BJA

[Dastardly]

Cool video. You seem almost as excited as I was back then Waiting a whole year must really be a killer! I’m sure it will be more than worth it in the end though.

[Gordon]

When you unbox it make sure you are wearing pyjamas of your favourite tv program back then!

[005AGIMA]

Originally Posted by Dastardly

Cool video. You seem almost as excited as I was back then Waiting a whole year must really be a killer! I’m sure it will be more than worth it in the end though.

Oddly, the day it arrived at my parents place it felt EXACTLY like it did back then lol. Yep going to be a long year. That said, where the hell did Jan and feb go?

Originally Posted by Gordon

When you unbox it make sure you are wearing pyjamas of your favourite tv program back then!

LOL I can't even think what i had back then. Fave show.....was I still into Knight Rider or had I outgrown it?

Who am I kidding, I'll always be into Knight Rider lol.

Prob had Star Wars bed spread, or "space wars", as was the cheap knock off one my mum got me instead

[005AGIMA]

Just published a video about my Android Tablet emulator that I'll take with me to the UK as a backup emulator "just in case".

It's an original ASUS TF101 with keyboard dock, which adds 2x USB and extended battery among other things.

The unit is running UAE4ARM, Amiga Forever Essentials (for roms) and Auto Start - No Root, to enable it to boot directly into an Amiga.

[ Show youtube player ]

[chiark]

Enjoyed that - and it'll be worth the wait.

[LieutLaww]

Back in the mists of time when I was still young friends and I had seen about this new Amiga machine in the likes of C&VG etc and drooling commenced, one day while visiting my favourite computer shop I saw it The Amiga 500 Batman Pack, it called to me told me I wanted it and in a true Wayne's World moment It would be mine oh yes it would. There was just one glaring problem I was poor, even though i was working it wasn't really a very well paid job, after discussing this situation with the manager he told me about this concept of finance where I could buy now and pay later. So I filled all the forms in picked what I wanted and he said they would contact me if i was approved or not.

Not too long later the call came through to say I had the finance approved and could come pick my Amiga up anytime I wanted, so I said I would be down at the weekend to come get it (the shop I used was in a different town) so they days dragged on and in a fit of impatience convinced my dad to take me down that afternoon so I could go and get it. Off we went I signed the forms and there it was in my hands the Batman Pack, we got home I plugged it all in to the TV in the front room and fired up Batman oh the sounds that came out of that TV were amazing I had never heard anything like it and my love affair with the Amiga started there and then.

[005AGIMA]

Originally Posted by LieutLaww

Back in the mists of time when I was still young friends and I had seen about this new Amiga machine in the likes of C&VG etc and drooling commenced, one day while visiting my favourite computer shop I saw it The Amiga 500 Batman Pack, it called to me told me I wanted it and in a true Wayne's World moment It would be mine oh yes it would. There was just one glaring problem I was poor, even though i was working it wasn't really a very well paid job, after discussing this situation with the manager he told me about this concept of finance where I could buy now and pay later. So I filled all the forms in picked what I wanted and he said they would contact me if i was approved or not.

Not too long later the call came through to say I had the finance approved and could come pick my Amiga up anytime I wanted, so I said I would be down at the weekend to come get it (the shop I used was in a different town) so they days dragged on and in a fit of impatience convinced my dad to take me down that afternoon so I could go and get it. Off we went I signed the forms and there it was in my hands the Batman Pack, we got home I plugged it all in to the TV in the front room and fired up Batman oh the sounds that came out of that TV were amazing I had never heard anything like it and my love affair with the Amiga started there and then.

Ah finance.

Not a fan but I must confess, I later owned 2 mountain bikes, a large scalextric set, and a bedroom TV thanks to the magic of finance.

Remember the "mail order catalogs"? The actual "price" was 3x normal rrp lol, but I could have things NOW (...well actually they used to take a month to arrive)

[LieutLaww]

At the time it was the only way I could afford anything lol.

[005AGIMA]

Quick update:

I have begun filming my thoughts and memories on the Tenstar Games pack, starting with game 1: Amegas
[ Show youtube player ]

[005AGIMA]

Slight update

1) I've purchased something else but that'll be a surprise in december lol

2) I've recorded all of the Tenstar games pack games on youtube now but they'll auto release over the coming months. I still need to record the batman pack games. Will post up as they release but they'll also auto populate the playlist on my original post.

3) The story in a slightly edited form WITH PHOTOS is now also on https://www.pczone.co.uk as Jim the editor has kindly made me a regular contributor and I'll be writing more stories for the site .

[005AGIMA]

Ep4 - Art of Chess is up
[ Show youtube player ]

Just so you know, the Tenstar games and other "Back to batman pack" vids are scheduled to auto publish 2 vids each month, until the end of the year.

Middle and end of the month, Monday 4pm GMT.